The State of Occidental Dissent

March 13, 2017 Hunter Wallace Blogging 34

OD has risen to new heights over the past few months.

More people are coming here than ever before. We’re more influential than ever before. There has been a sudden and dramatic change here since the election. After a year of observing the Alt-Lite brands, I decided to adapt some of their methods for our own purposes. I’ve been steadily working towards the goal of transforming OD into an Infowars-style platform for the Alt-Right.

Here’s a rundown of recent changes and our long term plans:

1.) Highspeed Internet – In January, I said it was going to make all the difference in the world here when I finally got WiFi. I’m sure everyone has noticed the big change in output.

2.) Email – I’ve never been good about checking my email. If I haven’t responded to your email or message on Twitter or Facebook, don’t take it personally. It is because I am busy or preoccupied with family. As this website has grown, there has been a sharp uptick in the number of messages I am getting on a daily basis. It’s a good problem to have. I wish I could respond to everything, but this website is consuming more and more of my time.

3.) Disqus – Disqus is one of the only speed bumps we have hit over the past two months. We still have a few weeks to switch to a different comment system. We will switch back to WordPress or find some other plugin. We’ve switched between comment systems half a dozen times now. It isn’t a big deal. It is only an inconvenience. We weren’t using Disqus for the ad revenue anyway.

4.) Twitter – I’m up to 9,000 followers on Twitter now. We’re reaching more people than ever before through Twitter. I have no idea how much longer that will last. I assume we will be banned at some point even though I don’t use Twitter for trolling. Lately, I have spent much more time writing content for Occidental Dissent, which is why I have been less active on Twitter.

5.) Facebook – I created a Facebook page for Occidental Dissent. Everything that is posted here is automatically posted to the Facebook page now where it can be shared by people who follow the page. It’s not something we are going to invest a lot of time and energy in building up given the probability of censorship. I’m still going to tinker around with it and improve it though.

6.) Podcasts and Interviews – I’ve done more podcasts and interviews over the past two months than I have in all the previous years I have been writing here combined. I don’t have the time to do our own podcast. I’m going to specialize in blogging and promoting the fine work of others.

7.) Forum – We raised the money to put in a new forum. I’ve created the basic structure I want for the forum, but I haven’t invested much time in the project. That’s going to change soon.

8.) Aesthetics – We’re getting much closer to the vision that I have in mind of OD becoming an Infowars-style social media platform with the new four column grid theme which maximizes the amount of fresh content on the home page. I’m planning to hire a web designer to create a common aesthetic for the blog and forum and to help out with the social media accounts.

9.) New Contributors – I would like to give a shout out to our new contributors. Michael Cushman has been working hard to help us build up our platform. Emily Rogers has created quite a stir with her new article on a how a suburban mom joined the Alt-Right. In the long run, the plan here is to add more contributors so we can generate more content and have a greater impact on political discourse. Eventually, we want to grow to the point where we are producing a firehose of incendiary content on a daily basis that can spread through social media networks.

10.) Pages – I’m going to be filling those up with content soon. At least that is the plan. The American Racial History Timeline is a project which I started in 2008/2009 and never finished.

11.) Identity Dixie – We had our first successful conference in Atlanta. We did a two hour podcast last night on Southern Identity and Libertarianism. It should be up soon.

12.) Alt-South – I have lots of books reviews coming down the pike which will flesh out the Alt-South concept. I’m going to be reviewing Louis Hartz’s The Liberal Tradition in America in a few days.

13.) Meetups – I’ve raised enough money without even asking to hold the first meetup. The interest is there. We’re going to start on the vetting and security soon.

14.) Fundraising – I would like to thank all of you who have contributed through the new PayPal button. Without your support, we wouldn’t have been able to launch the forum. I will be reopening the PO Box soon. As with everything in life, money is the hard ceiling on what we are able to do here. There’s only so much that I am capable of doing by myself even with this website as a full time project. I’m doing it now on my own initiative because I clearly see what needs to be done.

We’re still in the earliest stages of this transition.

In the long run, we are going to focus on creating content and building networks. When we have dozens of writers here doing news analysis and punditry with large social media followings, we will have reached our media goal. When we are able to host large and frequent regional meetups in the real world, we will have achieved our organizational goal.

About Hunter Wallace 12380 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

34 Comments

  2. Maybe it would be better to have a new site with a distinct brand for the punchy populism.

    This site I associate with your essays and the development of your ideas.

  3. You need to get on gab.ai which doesn’t censor, and CC: to Twitter (when they don’t block, shadowban or censor you).

    In the taxonomy of the Alt-Right, I’m more alt-west than alt-white, but I find it stimulating and although at some distant point after we’ve achieved victory, we can quarrel, I recognize the common enemy is more serious.

    Trump was D-Day. But we haven’t even got to Paris yet, much less the battle of the bulge. We will win – if we fight together.

    I give a hearing to all sides, but the left is so panicked that other than Glenn Greenwald, ( https://theintercept.com/greenwald/ ) who basically said “This Russia stuff is a trap” yesterday – and will be ignored by the left, I have a hard time finding anyone that has retained a shred of sanity.

    Better/worse, the polarization is getting worse. SXSW is now politicized. You can’t watch a movie, or attend some abstruse scientific or engineering conference without it being anti-Trump.

    The subtitle, “Nationalism, Populism, Reaction”, I not only have no problem with, but I support completely.

  4. Very good

    I encourage our OD readers to grow their own local Twitter and Facebook followers

    Hunter , I and other ID writers are sure to get censored at FB, Twitter etc but our readers can repost are best blogs to their followers

    I don t think a forum is such a great idea – preaching to our choir and these forums always fall down into personal flame wars ala Stormftont VNN

  5. I was reading Nietzsche last night and I want to offer this: The New Zarathustra comes down from the mountain and meets what could be the Old Zarathustra, a “saint” living a hermit’s life. The saint warns the New Zarathustra not to return to the town to teach the people, and instead live as he does.

    “And what doeth the saint in the forest?” asked Zarathustra.

    The saint answered: “I make hymns and sing them; and in
    making hymns I laugh and weep and mumble: thus do I praise
    God.

    With singing, weeping, laughing, and mumbling do I praise
    the God who is my God. But what dost thou bring us as a gift?”

    When Zarathustra had heard these words, he bowed to the
    saint and said: “What should I have to give thee! Let me rather
    hurry hence lest I take aught away from thee!” And thus they parted from one another, the old man and Zarathustra, laughing like schoolboys.

    When Zarathustra was alone, however, he said to his heart:
    “Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet
    heard of it, that God is dead!”

    When Zarathustra arrived at the nearest town which adjoineth the forest, he found many people assembled in the
    market-place; for it had been announced that a rope-dancer
    would give a performance. And Zarathustra spake thus unto
    the people:

    I teach you the Superman. Man is something that is to be
    surpassed. What have ye done to surpass man?

    All beings hitherto have created something beyond them
    selves : and ye want to be the ebb of that great tide, and would
    rather go back to the beast than surpass man?”

    And here it is. The unbridgeable divide. What is the virtue of the Southern Man? He values man and man’s God as they are; he does not think that God should be killed and that man should replace both mankind and God with transhumans/AI/robotics of his own creation – of which White Genocide removes the last source of resistance.

    What is the sin of Southern Man? Slavery? The sin has been purged, he himself slaves for those who have never been slaves. War mongering? Southern Man’s love of war has been purged through the repeated sup of it. No sin remains. God will deliver Southern Man and all who turn to Him (Russia, ect). I hope the preservation of man and man’s God is accomplished through the pen and not the sword, which is why I support Occidental Dissent, but that is for God to decide.

    • A lot of people are unhappy about your marriage to Varina Howell, Mr. President. They say she’s a half-breed.

  9. Smart move copying the Alt-Lite branding tactics and visual style.
    They know how to appeal to the mainstream audience.

    With the forums, you might want to start off with fewer subforums.
    Right now you have almost 20 and having all the activity split among 20 subforums makes it look like less active. Activity begets activity. It’s better for a forum to be too crowded than not crowded enough.

    Most forum sites end up with only a couple busy subforums anyway cause ppl will naturally post in the busiest ones cause they want the maximum # of ppl to see what they’re saying.

    I’d recommend having just a few subforums to start and expanding only when demand is there.

    Keep up the good work.

  10. Just made another donation (second one this month). Everyone, please do what you can. Every little bit helps.

  11. Dear Hunter – if you are going to do interviews on podcasts, take some speaking lessons. You have a wonderful speaking voice, as far as tonality, etc, but your delivery is frankly kinda flat. You are …abrupt. You don’t expand….

    I am referring to your Saturday appearance on TPC. You made statements. You didn’t expand. Your writing is SUPERB. You are trenchant, thorough, and amazingly swift in creating posts. I do marvel at your gift for writing and analysis. Get Mr. Edwards and/or Mr Alexander to coach you to be more engaging and relaxed and “conversational”. You want to sound like you are having FUN.

    You know I think you are wonderful. Please take my comments as my fervent support for your endeavors.

    Love,
    Denise.

  13. If this site is going for a populist Infowars/Breitbart/TheRebel feel then whats the relationship to AltRight.com?

  14. Unless and until you are selling doomsday supplements then it cannot truly be said this website is “infowars style.”

  16. Some constructive criticism and comments. I personally don’t like the new layout but…it’s better. I can see how it would attract people and it looks really great. Me I already know what you’re about so the denser format is better for me. Keep the new format.

    Stay away from huge masses of JavaScript. It slows everything down. Don’t let whoever you bring in turn the site in a huge bling contest. What you have now looks great. Stop while you’re ahead.

    I don’t know about podcast as I rarely listen to them. I read so much faster there’s no comparison but it would be good for traveling. Sometimes I listen to podcast while reading other pages. I see all these podcast I wonder if people really listen to them a lot or are they just easy to make so there’s lots of them???

    Get your PO box in a defensible, well lit, non diverse location.

    I wish you all the luck in the world and thanks for the effort you’ve put into this for all these years.

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